Friday, February 06, 2009

The second book I'd like to tell you about this week is Word Gets Around. This book by Lisa Wingate is a very easy read. It's the cute story of Lauren Eldridge who was raised in Daily, Texas, and on the rodeo circuit with her cowboy dad. When her father calls in a favor to Lauren to return to Daily to assist with training a horse that will be in a new Hollywood film, Lauren reluctantly leaves her home and heads toward Texas. Justin Shay is one of the biggest stars in Hollywood and screenwriter Nate Heath helps him get there with his scripts. When Justin tricks Nate into joining him on the project, Nate fears the worse will happen because the script as he's been given it is not sellable to a director. Not only does Justin's career hang on this film being a success, but Lauren's family farm is also at stack. Will Lauren stick around to train the horse or head back to the life she has built for herself as a university professor? Will Nate make the screenplay a brilliant success or leave Justin hanging?

The above is my synopsis of the book to its storyline. I thought the story was cute, but one thing drove me crazy the whole time. The author, trying to emphasis the Southerness of the talk would often write out how the words would sound with a Southern accent or twang. Being from the South I found it offensive to read in that she did not believe the reader could read the accent in their head without her writing it out. For instance, rather than writing guarantee, she would write guar-own-tee. This quickly got annoying and did not lend itself to me wanting to read other books like this. I have not read any other books by this author so I do not know if this is something she does in every book, but if so I'm not sure I'd be keen on reading other books by her.

If things like that do not bother you, or you just want a cute book to read on your vacation or day off, then hop over to Amazon and pick up a copy for yourself!

2 comments:

I have heard alot of good things about this book. I have heard about the dialect too. I am not sure whether it bothers me or not that she spells it out like that because when she does it makes me emphisis it more in my head..lol I hope to read this one soon.